North Koreans in Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997

Main points:

- Introduction – people lived through not one but many identities’ or we might say that identity was multiple – ethnic, gendered, occupational, class, or otherwise. (1)

- in this book hopes to show the reader how Chongryun formed and maintained the north Korean identity in Japan. It involved the development of a body of knowledge and pedagogical technology that gave rise to legitimate discourse used with the organization. (2)

- this book is a three-part ethnographic journey to consider the language, ideology and identity of three generations of north Korean in Japan organized around Chongryun. (2) Why language? Because it constituted identity. Why ideology? Because it overlapped with identity, it is part of ideology.(2)

- up to 97 percent  of Korean in Japan were born in Japan. Out of those who originally came from Korea, more that 97 percent were from southern provinces of the peninsula. North Korean identity was not geo-culturally pre-given, it was Chongryun’s  political projection.(3) Founded in 1955, Chongryun consisted of a complex of numerous associations. (3) It had one university, 12 high schools, 56 middle schools, 81 primary schools. (3) The school taught about North Korea and saw themselves as overseas nationals of north Korea. (3)

- it was true that there were two distinct organizations in Japan, respectively looked to north and south Korean for affiliation: Chongryun and Mindan. (5) Throughout the text, the book calls the individual who were by and large positively and closely associated with Chongryun the Chongryun Koreas. (5)

- the northern regime was attractive in the eyes of Korean leftist nationalist because it looked more like an indigenous regime. (6)

- in the late 1940s the league of Koreans in Japan, sympathetic to north Korea, suffered intense suppression from the Allied power and Japanese authority. In 1955 Chongryun emerged, adopting a strict policy of noninvolvement in Japanese’s internal affairs.  Its members identified themselves as ‘overseas nationals’ of north Korea. (7)

- anthropological studies of Japan in English ever since Ruth Benedict had been plagued by two problems. The first was the lack of history perspective. (8) For example, in ‘Night Work’ Anne Allison presented data from the early 1980s as if the information were supra historical intrinsic to Japanese culture. This ahistorical perspective continues to be held by Japanese anthropologists. The second problem was the tendency to subsume the whole society under a particular keyword. (8)

(to be continued)